Posts Tagged “J&J”

The gold standard in crisis marketing is the response to the Tylenol poisonings. The way Johnson & Johnson dealt with the crisis and it’s aftermath is now taught in university-level courses as the right way to deal with a crisis that threatens your company and your cash cow product. 

What did J&J do right? First, they didn’t go into stonewalling mode. They aggressively dealt with the problem, taking not just the high road, but doing everything possible to insure the safety of the public at their own, considerable expense. To begin with, they pulled all the product from the shelves. Their share of the painkiller market dropped from 35% to 8%. In time, they relaunched the brand, with triple-safety seals to prevent product tampering, and mounted an aggressive P.R. and marketing campaign. The result? They bounced back within a year, to become the dominant brand in analgesics. Oddly, they never caught the poisoner. More oddly, it did no long-term damage to J&J or to the Tylenol brand. 

You could argue that a Governor or President is primarily a crisis manager, at least in this day and age. Of course, when you bring crises upon yourself, you’re either supremely confident – or supremely stupid. Read the rest of this entry »